Support and Defend (3 page)

I
T TOOK
C
ARUSO LESS
than a minute to get line of sight on the rear of the property. At first he detected no movement other than an occasional shuffling in the chicken coop and a large lizard scurrying along the top of a wooden fence by the vegetable garden. But just as he was about to head back to the woodshed, he sensed motion in the dark closer to the house. He moved a few feet to the right and craned his neck farther to see what was there.

He saw them now in the night. One hundred feet away stood two figures; at least one of them was armed with a weapon hanging from a sling over his shoulder. They both wore dark clothing and stood close to each other in the center of the backyard, facing Arik’s home.

Dom thought one of them might have been wearing a mask, because no moonlight reflected off his facial features. He couldn’t tell anything about their ethnicity or their intentions, or even the make of the one weapon he saw. He tucked himself back into the palms and headed back to the Israeli, careful to move as silently as possible.

When Dom arrived back behind the woodshed he almost passed Arik without seeing him.

“Report,” Arik said, revealing himself in the near total darkness.

“Two men. I saw one gun. SMG or some sort of little machine pistol. Couldn’t tell what kind. They are watching the house from the far side of the chicken coop. Are the guys in front armed?”

“Micro-Uzi on one. He’s got a mask. Other one might have a pistol, but can’t see his hands clearly.”

Dom’s mind was racing. “Shit. Any chance they are Indian police?”

Yacoby shook his head.

“What do you think?”

“Two-man fire teams. It’s a classic
fedayeen
configuration.” Caruso knew
fedayeen
meant Islamic fighter.

“Lashkar?” Dom asked. Lashkar-e-Taiba was a Pakistani based terrorist organization that had been active in India for years.

“Maybe,” replied Arik, but he didn’t sound convinced.

“You think they will hit the house?”

Before Arik could reply, a woman’s shout cut through the hot night air. It was Hanna, Arik’s wife, Dom recognized it instantly. She sounded more confrontational than afraid, but her raised voice in the otherwise silent night was bone chilling.

Yacoby lurched up, ready to run to the sound of his wife’s cry, but he caught himself and knelt back down. He whispered, “They already have. These are perimeter security. There are others inside. At least two. Could be more.”

Dom looked to the Israeli with horror. He noted the relevant calm in Yacoby’s voice. He was intense, but there was no panic. He had to have been thinking about his wife and kids, but he somehow had the ability to push that aside and concentrate on the problem before him.

Getting past the four men outside.

Caruso asked, “How do you want to do it?”

Arik kept his eyes on the bungalow. He spoke quickly but softly. “It would take a half-hour to get the local police here, and I have no confidence they won’t just make the situation worse. None of my neighbors have a landline or a firearm. I have to deal with this situation myself.”

“Right.”

“Hanna and I have a plan in the case of trouble. If she had time, she would have put the kids in the bathroom off our bedroom. That’s where I’m heading. I’m going straight for the house. Side door to the kitchen off the driveway.”

“And me?”

“You stay here. Watch the men in the back and sound an alert if there is trouble.”

Caruso shook his head. “Not happening. I’m in this with you, all the way. I can cover you better in the house.”

Arik did not turn his head to look at Dom, he gave only a slight nod, his eyes still riveted on the scene in front of him. “Good. We go for the side door together. Once inside, I’ll grab a kitchen knife and try to make it to my family on the second floor. You grab a knife and be ready to engage these four out here if they try to come in.”

This sounded to Dom like a suicide mission, but he saw no other choice.

Yacoby stood slowly, readied himself to move forward, but then he leaned closer to Caruso. “If something happens to me, and you can get to it, I have a Tavor rifle and six mags in a locked chest under my bed. The combination is one, nine, six, six, four.”

Dom knew Arik wasn’t supposed to have a gun here in India, but it was no great shock he did.

“One, nine, six, six, four. Got it.”

Quickly, but still in a whisper, Arik said, “There will be no time for hesitation. You must show these men no mercy.”

Dom stood up. “Just get to your family.”

The two men moved toward the woodshed as Hanna Yacoby cried out again, her voice cutting through the sweltering night.

A
RIK AND
D
OM CROSSED
the crushed-seashell driveway between the cars in a low crawl, both men scraping their knees and hands in the slow and painful process. Dom was in the rear, his eyes shifting between Yacoby in front of him and the little he could see of the backyard of the property, hoping like hell neither of the men back there heard the noise and came to investigate. Arik was trying to keep some awareness of the men at the front of the property, but his main attention was on moving as quickly and as quietly as possible on his way to the house.

They made it to the side door, Arik rose just enough to get a hand on the latch, and he turned it slowly. A third shout emanated from upstairs in the bungalow, but this time it was a man’s voice, and Arik could not understand the words. He used the yelling to mask his movement, and he slipped into the dark and empty kitchen.

Caruso moved in behind him, then he and Yacoby both pulled carving knives out of a rack on the counter. The men did not speak, Arik just disappeared down the dark hallway toward the main living area with the staircase to the second floor, and Dom moved to the one place in the kitchen where he could see both entrances. He was thirty feet from the front door, fifteen from the kitchen door, and, frankly, in no good position to engage armed enemies at either entrance if it came down to it. The best he could do was prepare himself and hope Yacoby made it to his family, or to his gun, without generating enough noise for the enemy to send reinforcements into the house.

Weighing his options, he moved back to the knife rack and pulled a second weapon—this one a well-balanced high-end paring knife—and he returned to his post.

This still might be a suicide mission, but Caruso wasn’t going down without a fight.

A
RIK
Y
ACOBY HAD NO
idea how many opposition forces he was up against, but he’d come to the conclusion that the downstairs was clear. He could hear only the one man above him, shouting questions at his wife, who now shouted back just as angrily.

Arik may not have known how many he was up against, but he felt like he knew who they were. How they had found him here in India was a mystery, but that was a problem for later; for now, he had to focus all his faculties on saving his family.

At the bottom of the stairs he kicked off his sneakers, then he began moving silently up by ascending close to the wall, where the boards would not creak.

When he reached the top of the stairs he could barely see down the hallway that traveled the length of the second floor like a spine. An open bathroom door halfway down on the right allowed some moonlight to filter into the hall, and by this he could tell that his bedroom door was open at the opposite end of the hall. There were no moving shadows in the moonlight, indicating to him that either the bathroom was empty or anyone in there was perfectly still. Ahead on his left, the two doors were also open, and the rooms beyond them were pitch dark. The first was his private office, and the second was his kids’ room.

His blood ran cold, but he began moving up the hall with the knife at the ready.

He heard the man questioning his wife in the bedroom now. He spoke English, asking, not for the first time, apparently, where her husband had gone. He sounded frustrated, nearly desperate, and the crack of an open hand across flesh and a cry from his wife told Yacoby the intruder wasn’t getting any answers from Hanna.

Arik again checked the light in the bathroom for signs of a presence there, but still there was no movement. He had to clear the two rooms on his left before making it down the hall, but just as he began moving to check his office, a man appeared out of the black, stepping into the hallway. He wore a black ski mask and was several inches taller than Yacoby. Their eyes met for an instant, Arik sensed a weapon in the man’s hand, but he didn’t take time to focus on it. Instead, his own hand shot out like a piston, he stabbed the man in the arm but lost his grip as his victim spun away. Yacoby recovered by lunging forward with the dexterity and skill of a Krav Maga master. He pushed the slung machine pistol away from the masked man, then ripped it out of his hands and turned it around, pointing it high in his adversary’s face. The masked terrorist tried to raise his hands to defend himself, but Yacoby thrust the short-barreled rifle forward, shoving the flash hider into the man’s eye socket, knocking his head back again. As the gunman stumbled back into the bedroom the Israeli leapt on him, covered his mouth with his hand, and flipped him around on the floor. He snapped the man’s neck with a wrenching twist, severing his spinal cord.

The Israeli lowered the body the rest of the way to the floor, then quickly unfastened the Uzi from its sling and turned to check the room for other threats.

The office stood empty, but when he looked back up the hallway a figure appeared in the doorway to the master bedroom. Arik could barely make it out in the moonlight, but it was clearly an adult male, and he saw the man’s arm rise quickly in front of him.

In that instant Arik knew he’d have to fire the Uzi, and this would alert every one of the armed men on his property. He aimed and squeezed off a single round, and the armed intruder in the doorway spun away with a cry and grabbed his neck as he fell.

Arik began running up the hallway now, knowing he was racing against time to get to his family. He held the smoking Uzi out in front of him as he spun toward the last darkened doorway on the left, checking for any movement. This was his children’s room, and he was glad to find it empty. That they weren’t here meant to Arik his wife had had time to move them into the bathroom off the master bedroom.

He had just started to turn back to check the hall bathroom behind him when he heard a man scream. Before he could turn around, a figure flew out of the bathroom, crashed onto his back, and pitched him forward, slamming him into the wall of the hallway.

The machine pistol spilled out of his hands as he went down. . . .